1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to methods for the delivery of pharmaceutical compounds to the inner ear for the treatment of tinnitus induced by cochlear excitotoxicity. Specifically, this invention relates to the local administration of N-Methyl-D-Aspartate (NMDA) receptor antagonists to the inner ear to suppress the NMDA receptor mediated aberrant activity of the auditory nerve following acute, repeated or prolonged or chronic occurrences of cochlear excitotoxicity provoked by incidents such as acoustic trauma, presbycusis, ischemia, anoxia, treatment with one or more certain ototoxic medications or sudden deafness and thus, block tinnitus in the case of such incidents.
2. Description of Related Art
Tinnitus, the perception of sound without external acoustic stimulation, is a very common inner ear disorder. It is estimated that 8.6 million Americans, about 3 percent of the U.S. population, suffer from chronic tinnitus (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Vital and Health Statistics, Series 10, #200, October 1999). According to the American SpeechLanguage-Hearing Association (ASHA), a million or more persons find that their tinnitus prevents them from leading a normal life (0.3% of the population). European population studies estimate 7% to 14% of the population have talked with their physician about tinnitus, while potentially disabling tinnitus occurs in approximately 1% to 2.4% of people (Vesterarger V., British Medical Journal 314 (7082): 728-731 (1997)).
In spite of the high prevalence of tinnitus and its severe impact on the health and quality of life of people affected by it, there is no truly effective treatment available. Current therapy approaches include the avoidance of ototoxic medications, reduced consumption of alcohol, caffeine and nicotine, reduced stress, the use of background noises or wearable tinnitus maskers (some in combination with hearing aids), behavioral therapies such as hypnosis, cognitive therapy and biofeedback, tinnitus retraining therapy (TRT), pharmacological and other complementary therapies.
Tinnitus is not a disease, but rather a symptom common to various hearing disorders, just as pain accompanies many different illnesses. It is most frequently associated with noise-induced hearing loss, presbycusis and Ménière's Disease (Nicolas-Puel et al., International Tinnitus Journal 8 (1): 37-44 (2002)). Other, less frequent origins include exposure to ototoxic drugs (aminoglycoside antibiotics, high-dose loop diuretics, nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs and certain chemotherapeutic agents), reduced vascular flow (ischemia), autoimmune processes, infectious diseases, conductive hearing loss, otosclerosis, head trauma etc. In over 90% of cases, tinnitus is associated with hearing foss of known origin, and well over 70% originate within the inner ear (Nicolas-Puel et al., International Tinnitus Journal 8 (1): 37-44 (2002)).
Over the past decade, major advances in the research of the physiopathology of the inner ear resulted in the identification of the key role of the inner hair cell synaptic complex in the development of tinnitus induced by cochlear excitotoxicity, one of the most frequent triggers of tinnitus. Excitotoxicity, which was first described by Olney et al., J. Neuropathol. Exp. Neurol. 31(3): 464-488 (1972), is generally characterized as an excessive synaptic release of glutamate, which is the most important neurotransmitter in the Central Nervous System as well as in the auditory system. It activates postsynaptic glutamate receptors (ionotropic and metabotropic), which leads to depolarization and neuronal excitation. However, if receptor activation becomes excessive by an excessive release of glutamate as in the case of excitotoxicity, the target neurons are damaged and may eventually die (Puel J. L, Prog Neurobiol. 47(6): 449-76 (1995)).
Cochlear excitotoxicity is provoked either by exposure to excessive noise such as in the case of acute or repeated acoustic trauma (which leads to noise-induced hearing loss or presbycusis), sudden deafness or anoxia/ischemia (Pujol and Puel, Ann. NY Acad. Sci. 884: 249-254 (1999)) or treatment with one or more certain ototoxic medications. The release of excessive amounts of glutamate is induced either by the excessive sound pressure entering the cochlea in case of acoustic trauma or the reduced blood flow to the glutamate regulating system in case of anoxia/ischemia respectively sudden deafness. In all cases, excitotoxicity is characterized by a two-step mechanism: first, there is an acute swelling of the type I afferent dendrites mediated by the ionotropic glutamate receptors, which leads to a disruption of the postsynaptic structures and a loss of function. Within the next 5 days, synaptic repair (neo-synaptogenesis) is observed with a full or partial recovery of cochlear potentials (Puel et al., Acta Otolaryngol. 117 (2): 214-218 (1997)). In the second phase of excitotoxicity, which may develop after strong and/or repetitive injury, a cascade of metabolic events triggered by the entry of Ca2+ leads to neuronal death of the spiral ganglion neurons.
Cochlear excitotoxicity may induce tinnitus during the process of rupturing of the postsynaptic structures and, provided the rupture is not terminal, the following neo-synaptogenesis at the inner hair cell synaptic complex (Puel et al., Audiol. Neurootol. 7 (1): 49-54 (2002)). A key role in functional recovery after excitotoxicity is played by the NMDA receptors, which are not involved in the activity of auditory nerve fibres under physiological conditions (Puel et al., Audiol. Neurootol. 7 (1): 49-54 (2002)), but are up-regulated during the process of neo-synaptogenesis (Puel et al., C. R. Acad. Sci. III. 318 (1): 67-75 (1995)), mainly owing to their high calcium (Ca2+) permeability (Sattler and Tymianski, Mol. Neurobiol. 24 (1-3): 107-129 (2001)). As could be shown in an animal model of cochlear synaptic repair mechanisms, blockage of the NMDA receptors by local administration of the NMDA receptor antagonist D-AP5 delayed the functional recovery and the regrowth of auditory dendrites (Gervais D'Aldin et al., Int. J. Dev. Neurosci. 15 (4-5): 619-629 (1997)). It could thus be concluded that glutamate, in addition to its role as a fast excitatory neurotransmitter, has a neurotrophic role via the activation of NMDA receptors.
It has been hypothesized that the up-regulation of mRNA of NMDA receptors induced by cochlear excitotoxicity is responsible for abnormal spontaneous “firing” of the auditory nerve fibres, which may be perceived as tinnitus (Puel J.-L. et al., Audiol. Neurootol. 7 (1): 49-54 (2002)). During the process of neo-synaptogenesis afferent dendrites are in a critical state, and may thus be particularly susceptible to excitation by the activation of the NMDA receptors. To avoid any such aberrant excitation, and therefore tinnitus, which may well continue infinitely due to incomplete neo-synaptogenesis, a therapeutic strategy would thus seek to specifically antagonize NMDA receptors. As has been demonstrated, the local administration of NMDA receptor antagonists to the cochlea prevents excitotoxicity induced by acoustic trauma or ischemia (Duan et al., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 97 (13): 7597-7602 (2000); Puel, Prog. Neurobiol. 47 (6): 449-476 (1995); Puel et al., J. Comp. Neurol. 341 (2): 241-256 (1994)). While excitotoxicity could also be blocked by application of 2-amino-3-(3-hydroxy-5-methylisoxazol-4-yl) propionate (AMPA) or kainate receptor antagonists, as the acute swelling of afferent dendrites primarily occurs via them (Puel et al., J. Comp. Neurol. 341 (2): 241-256 (1994)), such an approach would have a potentially significantly negative impact on the auditory function. As fast excitatory neurotransmission between the inner hair cells and the auditory nerve fibres is predominantly mediated by AMPA preferring receptors (Ruel et al., J. Physiol. London 518: 667-680 (1999)), their blocking would suppress not only the undesired excessive stimulation of the auditory nerve, but also the desired, regular excitation and thus provoke hearing loss.
The hypothesized implication of NMDA receptors in the generation of tinnitus has so far only been tested and demonstrated in vivo with a behavioral model of salicylate-induced tinnitus (Guitton et al., J. of Neuroscience 23 (9): 3944-3952 (2003)). The behavioral model, which had to be developed to measure tinnitus, as tinnitus is not directly observable, was based on the active avoidance paradigm: the animals were conditioned to jump onto a pole whenever hearing a particular sound. Administration of salicylate led to a significant increase in the number of jumps even in the absence of external sound (false positives), indicating the perception of tinnitus. Following delivery of the NMDA antagonists MK-801, 7-CK and gacyclidine to the animals' cochleas via the round window membrane the number of false positives decreased significantly, indicating the suppression of tinnitus.
While these results provided for the first time a confirmation of the hypothesized implication of NMDA receptors in the occurrence of tinnitus, they could clearly not be generalized for all kinds of this inner ear disorder, as salicylate-induced tinnitus is a very peculiar form of tinnitus. Salicylate, the active component of aspirin, has been known for more than a century to induce tinnitus if taken in large doses (Cazals Y., Prog. Neurobiol. 62: 583-631 (2000)). It may provoke similar sensations of tinnitus as in the case of cochlear excitotoxicity or other cases with different origin, but it is usually reversible and based on a specific molecular mechanism. Application of mefenamate, a well known cyclooxygenase inhibitor, instead of salicylate also increased the number of false positive responses, suggesting that salicylate-induced tinnitus is related to an inhibition of cyclooxygenase pathway. While tinnitus induced by cochlear excitotoxicity is the result of a cascade of glutamate mediated processes leading to the up-regulation of mRNA of NMDA receptors, salicylate-induced tinnitus is mediated by changes in the arachidonic acid metabolism (see e.g. Cazals Y., Prog. Neurobiol. 62: 583-631 (2000)). Salicylate has been shown to inhibit cyclooxygenase activity (see e.g. Vane and Botting, Am. J. Med. 104: 2S-8S (1998)). Evidence demonstrates that arachidonic acid potentiates NMDA receptor currents (Miller et al., Nature 355: 722-725 (1992); Horimoto et al., NeuroReport 7: 2463-2467 (1996); Casado and Ascher, J. Physiol. 513: 317-330 (1998)). Electrophysiological studies have demonstrated that arachidonic acid increases the channel opening probability of NMDA receptor in various systems, including cerebellar granule cells, dissociated pyramidal cells, cortical neurons, and adult hippocampal slices (see e.g. Miller et al., Nature 355: 722-725 (1992); Horimoto et al., NeuroReport 7: 2463-2467 (1996); Yamakura and Shimoji, Prog. Neurobiol. 59: 279-298 (1999)). Unlike tinnitus induced by excitotoxicity, there is thus no morphological damage to the inner hair cell synaptic complex, and in particular to the synaptic ending, involved in salicylate-induced tinnitus.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,716,961 to Sands (incorporated herein by reference) discloses the administration of an NMDA receptor-specific antagonist for the purpose of treating tinnitus. Its neuroprotective properties in the case of glutamate excitotoxicity are demonstrated in cell culture. However, the compound's pharmacological action and efficacy under pathophysiological conditions in vivo are not shown, i.e. there is no relation to tinnitus induced by cochlear excitotoxicity. This must be considered a serious deficiency given the complexities of the inner hair cell synaptic complex. In addition, Sands teaches oral administration of the NMDA receptor antagonist, while discussing topical administration only for cases where a patient is unable to swallow or the oral route of administration is otherwise impaired. Topical administration is discussed nonspecifically in the form of “solutions, lotions, ointments, salves and the like.”
Systemic administration of NMDA receptor antagonists to treat inner ear disorders is usually ineffective, as the cochlea is protected like the brain by a biological barrier. Relatively high doses to achieve a desired therapeutic effect would thus be required, but various potent side effects of NMDA receptor antagonists such as reduced learning, memory or motility significantly restrict the maximum tolerable doses. As various studies with humans for the treatment of CNS disorders by NMDA receptor antagonists have shown, plasma levels after systemic administration were consistently below those needed for maximal neuroprotection in animal models, as clinical doses had to be limited due to a number of potentially adverse CNS effects, catatonia, increased blood pressure and anaesthesia (Kemp and McKernan, Nature Neuroscience 5, supplement: 1039-1042 (2002)). On the other hand, it has been shown that local administration of the NMDA-AMPA receptor antagonist caroverine to the inner ear results in higher intracochlear concentrations, while avoiding high secondary concentrations in plasma and cerebrospinal fluid as seen with systemic administration (Chen et al., Audiol. Neurootol. 8: 49-56 (2003)).
U.S. Pat. No. 6,066,652 to Zenner et al. (incorporated herein by reference) discloses a method for treating tinnitus through administration of adamantane, a known NMDA receptor antagonist. The inventors cite results from a clinical study with systemic administration which showed a reduction in tinnitus during treatment. Hypotheses brought forward to explain the results obtained centre on outer hair cells and the presynapse, and do not specifically cover the role of NMDA receptors.
While there are several indications supporting the hypothesis that NMDA receptors play an important role in the genesis of tinnitus induced by cochlear excitotoxicity, the foregoing discussion shows that the molecular mechanisms are still unclear, and that it is therefore not possible to predict reliably whether the use of NMDA receptor antagonists will effectively block this particular type of tinnitus. Further pathophysiological studies on the generation of tinnitus are thus required to validate the hypothesis and develop specific and truly effective therapeutic strategies.